Comment les managers de proximité des travailleurs des déchets adaptent les politiques RH territoriales au (dans le) travail réel?

In a context of continuous transformation of public management, marked by the influence of New Public Management (NPM), local authorities must adapt their internal organizations while ensuring the continuity of their essential missions. Waste management is an emblematic field of this tension, both from the point of view of governance and professional practices on the ground. This communication (poster) presents an analysis focused on the HRM practices at work in public waste management services, based on a qualitative survey conducted among garbage collectors (drivers and garbage collectors), waste disposal center agents, and their local managers. By framing a broader reflection on the changes in public management, it aims to understand how strategic objectives in terms of human resources are translated—or distorted—according to the adaptation made by local managers in their operational practices. The results reveal strong structural tensions between the political-managerial level and the operational level. Local managers, at the crossroads of top-down logic and the concrete realities of work, play a decisive but often invisible role as HR interface, mobilizing discreet room for maneuver and specific management tools to adapt policies to operational realities. Beyond the specific case of waste services, this study questions more broadly the conditions for the effectiveness of local public HR policies, and the capacity of public management to integrate the specificities of field professions into a more contextualized and realistic approach to human resources management.